Interview with Ali Moosani, CEO of FORM

As the retail landscape continues to evolve, brick-and-mortar operators are balancing a complex mix of challenges and opportunities. Labor shortages, operational fragmentation, and the race to optimize retail media strategies all require new levels of agility and innovation. The CEO of GoSpotCheck by FORM, Ali Moosani, explores how retail leaders are leveraging AI-powered technology to streamline operations, empower teams, and strengthen supplier partnerships.

Q: Labor shortages and high turnover continue to challenge brick-and-mortar retail. What strategies are leading retailers using to transform their workforce and operations?

A: Labor challenges aren’t new, but the urgency to address them has reached a tipping point. We often talk about a digital maturity model that retailers can follow to improve labor efficiency and workforce flexibility in their stores.

It starts with Step One: Simplifying and standardizing in-store operations. Too often, we see different departments—produce, bakery, electronics, apparel—each running their own playbooks. While specialization is important, this fragmentation makes it harder for store teams to flex between departments when needed. A team member trained in one department can’t easily contribute in another, and managers spend more time guiding rather than leading.

By implementing one unified operational system across departments, regions, and banners, retailers can simplify task management and ensure consistency in how work gets done. This makes onboarding easier, allows employees to cross-train more effectively, and saves store leaders valuable time.

Step Two involves accelerating data capture and shelf intelligence. Technologies like image recognition enable store teams to quickly assess shelf conditions—out-of-stocks, pricing accuracy, planogram compliance—without manual effort. This data gives leaders a more complete picture of store execution in far less time.

And finally, Step Three is augmenting store teams with third-party labor, especially when labor budgets are tight. The key is equipping these third-party teams with the same task management and image recognition tools as full-time staff. This creates a seamless experience and ensures that retailers maintain operational visibility and quality standards, regardless of who’s doing the work. Store teams are then free to focus on higher-value tasks that require deep product knowledge or customer service expertise.

Q: How are retailers increasing their operational agility in physical stores to keep up with the speed and flexibility of e-commerce?

A: One of the greatest advantages e-commerce teams have is agility. They can pivot quickly—changing prices, promotions, or featured products in near real time—because digital catalogs and merchandising are so dynamic. Additionally, e-commerce generates structured data that’s highly accessible and actionable, giving teams the ability to optimize strategies on the fly.

Brick-and-mortar retail has traditionally lagged in this area, but that’s changing. Retailers are now using image recognition technology to capture unstructured data—photos of shelves, displays, and store conditions—and instantly convert it into structured insights, such as shelf positioning, out-of-stocks, and compliance metrics.

This allows store operations, merchandising, and buying teams to make informed decisions faster than ever before. For example, retailers can now analyze shelf conditions leading up to key sales periods or holidays and quickly adjust store priorities or promotional strategies, much like they do in e-commerce.

Augmented reality is a way to visualize this transformation. Imagine a store associate viewing a shelf through their device’s camera and seeing real-time data overlays that highlight gaps, pricing issues, or planogram discrepancies. It’s a powerful example of how technology bridges the gap between unstructured and structured data, unlocking new levels of agility in physical stores.

Q: Retail media has been a major focus for retailers over the last few years. How is in-store data creating new opportunities for collaboration with brands?

A: Retail media is transforming how retailers and suppliers work together. Historically, the focus has been on digital touchpoints, like e-commerce platforms and in-store digital signage, where brands pay for prioritized placement and advertising.

Now, forward-thinking retailers are expanding these partnerships by offering brands access to in-store data that complements their retail media strategies. Using image recognition and task management tools, retailers can capture and analyze shelf conditions, on-shelf availability, category dynamics, and planogram compliance—at scale and with minimal effort.

By sharing these insights with brand partners, retailers can provide a level of visibility into stores that was previously unattainable—without requiring brands to deploy additional labor. This helps brands optimize their assortments, improve stock levels, and fine-tune their category strategies, resulting in better outcomes for both the retailer and the supplier.

Retailers who embrace this model can position themselves as true strategic partners to brands—not just by selling shelf space or ad inventory, but by delivering valuable data and insights that improve execution and drive mutual growth.

Once again, AR plays a role here. Brands can visualize the data collected from stores overlaid onto images or store layouts, helping them quickly interpret complex insights and take action in their own strategies.

Q: How can retailers get started with these technologies to accelerate their digital transformation?

A: Start by simplifying store operations and building a unified system for task management and data capture across all departments. Then, introduce image recognition to automate shelf intelligence and gain faster insights. Finally, explore opportunities to augment your teams with third-party labor, equipped with the same tools and technologies as your internal teams.

As retailers adopt these technologies, they create a strong foundation for greater operational agility, enhanced supplier collaboration, and new revenue streams through retail media partnerships. The future of retail is data-driven, and those who invest in structured, actionable insights today will be best positioned to thrive tomorrow.

About author

Ali Moosani is the CEO of FORM, a mobile digital assistant for frontline teams. https://www.form.com/